Cecilia & Wade | Saturday Afternoon

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Cece and Wade trade off deciding what they're going to do whilst hanging out with one another.


"You know, I'm glad I went with this color." In the passenger seat of Wade's Impala, with the woods of Westchester County flying past the windows, Cecilia was instead glancing down at her fingernails. A Selena song was playing, and she drummed them against the armrest in time. "Not usually my jam, but I'm glad you convinced me."

She looked up and over at Wade, who was sitting in the driver's seat. "Glad we did this," she added. "I mean, you know. We haven't hung out in a while." She paused to pick up a Snapple from the cupholder. "Chattering with the ladies massaging our feet counts as hanging out, right?"

"Dude, yes," Wade said, half-grinning. "I still can't believe the lady doing my feet tried to get me to go lavender. Lavender is just not my color." In fact, he hadn't gone with a color, just the whatever whatever for feet and no polish because it wasn't like anyone was really going to be paying attention to his toenails, anyway. They were in his boots and when they weren't in his boots, no one was looking at them. "But this was fun. It's my turn to pick what we do next, right?"

"Did I agree to that?" Cecilia did her best to look innocent and confused as she sipped from the glass bottle in her hand. "I don't remember saying that..."

"Pretty sure that was an agreed upon stipulation of the mani/pedi trip," Wade said, waiting until the Selena song had ended before flipping the radio to something more his speed. "Or at least it should have been."

"I suppose it was," Cecilia acknowledged, putting the bottle back in its place. "So what — oh, I love this song." She glanced at the radio. "Well, what's it gonna be? Gonna use this opportunity to convince me to play paintball?"

Wade grinned. "Nope." He let his declaration stand for a minute while the music played and New York flashed past the windows, all green and woody. "We're going skydiving," he finally said.

"We're — what?" Cecilia turned in her seat to look at Wade, pulling on the seatbelt so she could move. "Wade," she said in disbelief, searching his face for signs of a joke. "Wade. No."

"Yes," Wade said, borderline gleeful. "Oh, yes. It's gonna be awesome."

"Wade. A stranger is not going to push me out of an airplane and toward the ground."

"Nah, you get strapped to my front and I jump us out of a plane and it's awesome and then I pull the chute far enough in advance for you to appreciate the view and the adrenaline rush," Wade said. "I've been jumping out of planes for over thirty years and I'm not a stranger."

Cecilia opened her mouth to respond, but she was at a loss for words. So instead, she simply stared at Wade, somewhat stupefied as she imagined putting her life in his hands. "Well," she said after enough awkward gaping, "I guess I trust you."

Wade gave Cecilia the side-eye for a moment before turning his attention back to the road. "I'm way more likely to accidentally give you food poisoning with midnight steak than I am to turn the both of us into splat marks," he offered, quirking an eyebrow.

"Fair point." Cecilia grinned, turning her own focus back to the window. "I didn't mean it like that - I mean, obviously, if I were going to be strapped to anyone's chest while plummeting to my potential death, I'd pick you." She looked back at him with a friendly smile. "Or Arthur," she added after a second. "Because, you know, lucky."

"I'll give you that one," Wade said, laughing a little. "He's a good one to have in a fire fight, for sure, if only so you can hide behind him. Which I've done. Worked like a charm."

"Oh sure." Cecilia rolled her eyes. "He's also good as, you know. A person. I mean, it's still the tiniest bit weird, but not really. Weird how things change."

"I mean, yeah," Wade said. "I won the Yellow Stone predator bingo thing, which I'm not even sure how that happened except that maybe his luck backfired on me and that's the reason a pack of wolves tries to chase me down, but he's good people."

"Yeah." She nodded. "So," her tone changed to be more apprehensive, "you've jumped out of a plane before?"

Sparing Cecilia another look, Wade asked, "You missed the 'thirty years of jumping out of planes' part earlier, didn't you?"

***
An hour and forty-five minutes, one minor bribe, and a crash-course in skydiving for Cece later and they were in the air, altitude climbing. "Stop freaking out," Wade said, grinning.

"I'm not freaking out." Cecilia tried to cross her arms, but the vinyl of the skydiving suit was so loud that she gave up halfway through the gesture. "Not yet anyway. Just, you know. Doing math."

"You're a surgeon, you know exactly what happens to a human body dropped from 30,000 feet without a parachute," Wade said dryly. "No amount of math is going to change what you know. Or the fact that it's irrelevant because once this B90 King Air hits 30k, we're set."

"Wrong math," Cecilia shook her head and shot daggers at Wade. "Trying to remember physics to figure out whether..." She glanced around to make sure nobody was listening to them. As if it were possible to hear anything but the person beside you in the back of a plane. "Just wondering how far I'll bounce when my forcefield hits the ground."

Wade beamed. "Got an answer yet?"

"My answer," she said with a look, "is you better pull the damn parachute cord."

"I was gonna say, at the velocity we're gonna be falling at if I don't pull the chute or it doesn't work for some reason, wouldn't you still, like, liquefy or something?" Wade waggled his eyebrows. He'd never really thought about it before, bu the guessed he'd probably live through hitting the ground from 30,000 feet, maybe. He thought briefly about Other Wade from his fight and how it'd looked like he was regenerating from the neck down after decapitation, then added the addendum 'if my brain's still intact which it probably won't be' to the end of his earlier thought.

Cecilia set her jaw and sat quietly for a second before elbowing him in the ribs.

Laughing a little as he rubbed at his ribs, Wade put his oxygen mask back in place and indicated Cece should do the same. Neither of them wanted to get the skydiving bends. He figured they'd be less awful for him, but still. They'd suck a lot.

Cecilia followed Wade's direction and closed her eyes for a second as the plane rose. Part of her was terrified; this was not fair payback for a pedicure, and she planned to have him make up for this trip, if she survived it without being maimed.

She opened her eyes to find Wade looking at her curiously. With the masks on, she couldn't say what she wanted to, and so she settled for leaning her head on his shoulder.

Wade loved jumping out of planes. It was a rush, packed with adrenaline and endorphins and all kinds of fun body chemistry. But he also loved the free fall and high altitude, low open jumps gave him a full two minutes worth of that, which is why he'd arranged things this way.

Some people zenned out listening to music or watching television or just being outside. And Wade could do that. He had forms he could go through, people he could spar with, straight up exercise he could do if he wanted. But there was literally nothing quite like the adrenaline crash after doing something like this - it was almost better than sex, better than killing people, better than winning a fight with a truly worthy opponent.

So he stayed still, going through the breathing techniques he'd become familiar with decades ago and making sure Cecilia was doing them properly, too. Once they reached the right altitude, though, he stood up so they could finish prep for the jump.

Despite her instincts, Cecilia stood as well, steeling herself for what was about to happen. Since everything that had happened in January, she'd been trying to be stronger and bolder. This wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind, but she figured it counted. As she followed Wade's lead, adjusting straps and checking zippers, she caught his eye and gave him a thumbs up.

A man came over to both of them and began to strap them together, moving their harnesses and shifting the skydiving rig. Cecilia tried to be accommodating, lifting arms and helping tighten clips even though her stomach was jumping. She was glad to have Wade behind her, weird as it felt, so that he couldn't see the slight panic behind her steely gaze.

Normally Wade would've done his own gear check, but jumping with someone strapped to his chest, while not an entirely new experience, meant there were different straps and buckles and things to tighten and he was inclined to leave that to the people who were paid to make sure the straps and buckles and things were done up properly.

Oxygen mask on, since he wanted to maintain useful consciousness, Wade gave the okay to the man standing at the door. He hit the lever to open it and then the sound of rushing wind engulfed them. Tapping Cece on the shoulder to give her the countdown till he jumped so she'd be ready, he paused just long enough to look out, glad it was a cloudless day and he was able to make out the actual curve of the earth.

And then he jumped.

There was a whoosh, and suddenly, Cecilia was out of the plane. Her legs started flailing almost instantly, but she did her best to control them so as not to inadvertently kick Wade in the crotch.

To say the free fall was breathtaking was an understatement. She and Wade plunged into the cold air, and even with the oxygen mask, she found her breath catching. But her adrenaline began to pump, and she felt weightless and free - freer than she'd imagined she'd feel while gravity brought her down to a sure death. And despite the speed at which she was sure she and Wade were falling to the ground, everything felt like it was happening in slow motion.

Two full minutes of free fall - when you were as full of adrenaline as Wade currently was, seconds could stretch into decades. He didn't lose track of time, of course, checking it carefully, but it seemed like an eternity of falling before it was time for him to pull the chute. And he enjoyed every single one of those timeless seconds as it passed until they hit the mark and suddenly they weren't free falling anymore, the parachute was out and open and slowing their descent dramatically, dragging both of them backward with a hard jerk on their harnesses.

Cecilia wasn't sure how far they'd fallen at this point, but the wind was still ferociously loud, and the cold air suggested they were still fairly far from the ground. As they jerked back and slowed down, she took the opportunity to turn her head and look around. And owing to some combination of not being dead yet, the disbelief that she'd made it out of the plane, and the beauty of the moment, a few tears came to her eyes.

Wade was ready to go again, would've paid the guys in the plane to turn right back around and take them up again, but once was probably enough for Cecilia's first jump and anyway, they needed to get back to the mansion for the unofficial potluck that was going to happen. So as they dropped, angling toward the landing area, he just grinned.

When they landed, Cecilia lifted her legs up and let Wade do the bulk of the work. Then, she extended her legs so they'd both be standing. When she pushed her goggles up, the streaks from the tears on her face were clear, but she was giving him a wide grin. "So," she finally said, her voice still a little breathless, "we lived."

Removing his own goggles and his oxygen mask, Wade grinned back. "Oh, ye of little faith - of course we lived. And wasn't is as awesome as I said it'd be?"

"No," Cecilia shook her head, still smiling, "you didn't do it justice. That was just - that was incredible, and dangerous and... wow. Just, wow."

Wade laughed aloud at that, releasing the last of the straps that had held them together through the jump. "So're you a convert? Wanna go again some time?"

"Uh, yeah." Cecilia stepped away from him, kicking the straps loose. "God, yes. I can't - I'm still a little terrified and my heart's still, like." She patted her chest rapidly. "I mean, I - thank you."

"Sweet," Wade said, walking back so he could start gathering up the parachute. The buckles and straps on his harness clinked together as he moved, his goggles down around his throat and his oxygen mask hanging to the side. "We'll get you up to the point where you can jump on your own, that'll be really fun."

Cecilia snorted. "Yeah? I don't know about that." She reached behind her head and fully removed her goggles. "Think I need someone else to push me out of the plane."

"I can do that when you're not strapped to my front," Wade pointed out, half of the parachute bundled up in his arms. He handed it off to the man who finally ran up to them to help with the last of the equipment. He could just see the plane coming back around, heading for the runway to land. "But we'll work on it." Removing the helmet, the mask, and the goggles, he stuck all of them beneath one arm and offered his glove-covered fist to Cecilia. "Pound it."

"Ugh, really?" As she fiddled with her helmet, Cecilia wrinkled her nose, but only in good fun. Seconds later, her features relaxed into a smile and she bumped her glove-covered fist against Wade's. "Now help me get this off."

His salute only partially mocking, Wade said, "Yes, ma'am," and started helping her get out of the jumpsuit.